Today Bill is living with friends while he tries to raise enough money to rebuild his home that burned down. He wants to buy a mobile home in either NH or VT as has new home.

His journey through live has been all about helping others and inspiring youth.

Now he is asking for help as a 73 year trying to start again.

"Real Bill" William Kathan, the “World Exercise Champion”, life has been about inspiring and educating children and adults of all ages to have fun and be healthy by showing off his talents for fun feats of extreme human strength and unique ways to exercise. Bill entertains and educates people in the process of breaking world exercise records.

Since 1998, “Real Bill”, William Kathan has been setting and breaking world exercise records. He has broken and/or set almost 200 personal world records. Some of those were recorded in Guinness Book of World Records and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.

From 2019 to 2024 Lyme disease interrupted Bill’s attempts at world records. He was severely knocked down by Lyme Disease to the point of being severely debilitated. By God’s grace and intervention he made a full recovery. Being back on his feet, he is at it again, to continue being the oldest world record holder for many more upcoming world records he wants to break.

Today, in 2025, Bill is almost 73 years old. His latest endeavor is to do jumping jacks with the most people at one time.

Real Bill” plans to continue inspiring youth and adults of all ages to adopt lifelong habits of good health. His adaptation of the “NEW START” program is key to his ability and accomplishments along with his trust in God.

This fundraiser for Bill allows him to pay for his living expenses and rebuild his home (or buy a mobile home) while he continues doing fun educational exercise events for and with kids and adults. Bill eventually hopes to be able to make donations to help Homeless Veteran's — a cause he feels strongly about.

➡️ Fill out the CONTACT FORM to stay updated or to sign the guest book for people participating in his events.

If you have been to any of his recent events, Bill wants to thank you for being part of those events.

➡️ SEE ALL OF BILL'S CURRENT RECORDS! View his ongoing records of more than 160 world records.

➡️ HOW IT BEGAN: Bill's obsession with exercise began when he saw a world-record set of jumping jacks — 5,103 in an hour — on "Good Morning America" in 1999. By the following year, Bill had trained enough to pump out 5,671 jumping jacks ... in front of astonished vegetarian diners at the Country Life Restaurant in Keene, N.H. (Source: Working It Out With 'World Exercise Champion' Bill Kathan By Sarah Tuff Dunn, SEVEN DAYS)

➡️ WATCH VIDEO: Man claims to have set world record while walking up mountain in Hinsdale / Oct 19, 2017 / A man who witnessed the feat said Bill Kathan walked up Wantastiquet Mountain in Hinsdale, NH on Wednesday while balancing a baseball bat on one finger.

The witness said Kathan also walked up the mountain earlier this week while balancing a pool stick on one finger. He said he made it to the summit in 51 minutes.

➡️WATCH VIDEO️: Backwards Sack Race on the show on WMUR TV Chronicle / Sack Race Backwards 31.1 Seconds in 2015 (Chester, New Hampshire) Jan. 15, 2020

➡️WATCH VIDEO: Real Bill Kathan beats the world record for most jumping jacks in a minute at almost 60! / June 4, 2012 / Bill Kathan, a Vermont native, and exercise fanatic, is almost 60 years old, and a true inspiration to anybody who strives to be fit at ANY age. Watch Bill complete 112 jumping jacks in one minute!! Posting "part II" in a few.

➡️WATCH VIDEO: Real Bill Does Push-Ups on Raw Egg / Nov. 6, 2015 / Bill Kathan showed up unexpectedly at Ripley’s headquarters in Orlando, FL and though we normally prefer appointments, he piqued our interest when he said he could do push-ups while balancing on raw eggs.

➡️ARTICLE: Oct 17, 2018 Rutland Herald. PODCAST (text below)

By SETH HARKNESS Herald Staff

For his last world record attempt, William Kathan trained by cleaning a spot on the floor of the dairy barn in Vernon where he works and doing squat thrusts in boots, pants and a coat. Kathan performed this exercise untold thousands of times in this heavy garb as he readied himself to spend a week repeatedly dropping to his hands, kicking out his feet, and righting himself.

His unorthodox training paid off between Nov. 14 and 20 when Kathan did squat thrusts for eight hours a day, for a total of 22,300 and what he claims is a new world record.

"When I got into shorts and a T-shirt I was ready to fly," said the 142-pound self-proclaimed champion, who is in the process of trying to have his athletic accomplishments inscribed in the Guinness Book of World Records. In the meantime, he has self-published his feats across almost every inch of his beige 1988 Chevrolet Celebrity.

At 51, Kathan may be nearing the end of his record-setting days. Looking back on the 31 world records he claims to own — formidable numbers of jumping jacks, abdominal crunches, leg lifts and other exercises — Kathan said he is not sure he can better his own achievements.

In jumping jacks, for instance, which the wiry athlete considers his forte, he already credits himself with records in six different timed events, from one minute to one year.

For Kathan, though, it has never been just about the numbers. The Seventh Day Adventist (who does not train or spend money on Saturday for religious reasons) said athletics are a means for him to bring a message about health and self-respect to children.

If the message Kathan shares with children sounds somewhat generic, the director of a YMCA in Keene, N.H., where Kathan used to train said it is his delivery that makes it effective.

"Anybody can talk the talk, but he actually goes out and does amazing things to back that up," said Peter Sebert, senior program director at the Keene YMCA.

Kathan's singular dedication to setting exercise records may have reached its peak between March 2000 and March 2001. During that year, he did jumping jacks every day for about seven hours a day at a health food store in Keene, N.H. He tallied 2,605,600 jumping jacks by his own count, while becoming a fixture at Country Life Natural Foods.

"He wasn't in the way of customers, so they didn't mind," said store manager Barry Paton, who knew Kathan from church and offered him the venue.

The oldest of eight children, Kathan grew up working on an uncle's farm in Putney, Vermont which he credits with helping to develop his physical abilities. Though Kathan said he was always a slow learner in school, he was quick on the soccer field and in his chores on the farm.

Kathan also found he could excel on the dance floor. From the time he was 6 years old, he accompanied his mother to square dances. For most of his life he has gone dancing every week, which he said helped him develop speed and coordination.

Kathan dropped out of school after ninth grade. He had some success as a Golden Gloves boxer in his early 20s, but put down his gloves after concluding "fighting was kind of hard, kind of brutal."

There was a long restless period when he bounced among different jobs, and drifted between Vermont and Florida. He painted houses and worked as a security guard among other things, but uniforms never fit and every job felt too restrictive, he said. He didn't stick with anything for long.

"What am I doing here?" he said he would ask himself. "This isn't me, what is me is running and jumping."

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Sometimes he couldn't contain his physical energy and he'd begin exercising on the job. "I'd be doing squats or pushups. Sometimes they'd catch me and say, 'You can't be doing that. We have to let you go,'" he said.

Kathan came into his own as an athlete relatively late in life. Four years ago, his ex-wife called to tell him about a man attempting to set a jumping jack record on television, and Kathan said he was inspired to try the same.

After training for one year, he notched the first in a long string of records by doing 11,229 jumping jacks in two hours.

Over the next four years, Kathan expanded his list of athletic feats by challenging whatever records he thought he could break, wherever he could find space. He did 24,360 leg lifts in six hours on the capitol lawn in Montpelier. He performed 6,730 abdominal crunches in one hour in a New Hampshire Laundromat. On the roof of a Brattleboro pizza restaurant, he held a stick in both hands and jumped back and forth 30 times.

At the same time, Kathan was pursuing his passion for speaking to children with the same intensity he brought to exercising. In one month he traveled to 61 schools all over New England and elsewhere, he said, sharing suggestions for healthy living and demonstrations of his athletic abilities.

Finding his place athletically seems to have helped Kathan settle into a more stable work routine, too. For the last year and a half he has done morning chores at a large farm in Vernon run by the pastor of his church.

It is tempting to consider what Kathan might have accomplished if he had undertaken his athletic endeavors earlier, but the athlete said he has no regrets.

"I wouldn't have done any better in my 20s," he said. "It took all these years of moving fast on the farm, throwing hay bales around ... and dancing every weekend. The only thing that hurt me was it was smoky in the bars and I got smoke in my lungs."

Kathan's claims to world record status are mostly based on listings he has found on the Internet. He has applied to have his athletic feats listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, though the book does not yet acknowledge most of the categories in which he competes.

In hopes that the Guinness editors will someday recognize his feats, Kathan videotapes his record attempts and makes sure there are witnesses to verify his claims.

Some of Kathan's records may be too esoteric even for the Guinness Book. In October, he claimed a record for walking up Mount Monadnock backward in one hour and five minutes.

A month earlier, he bagged two records for crawling up the same mountain on his hands and feet and for walking up blind-folded.

(Source: Rutland Herald)

➡️ Fill out the CONTACT FORM to stay updated, to volunteer, or to sign the guest book for people participating in his events.

➡️ WATCH VIDEO: "Exercise enthusiast "Real Bill" Kathan of Brattleboro attempts to break the Guinness World Record for back-handed push-ups at Burlington High School last week. Kathan says he finished 681 push-ups that day." >>> WATCH VIDEO <<<

Source: GLENN RUSSELL, FREE PRESS, July 29, 2014

➡️ WATCH VIDEO: Bill Kathan's YouTube for videos of his AMAZING FEATS of human world record making!

➡️ ARTICLE: World Exercise champion walks backward to help c / by Jason Przybycien May 3, 2007 / Wellsboro Gazette

A journey of 3,000 miles begins with a first step. For Bill Kathan Jr., that first step, and every one thereafter, was backward.

Kathan started a walk from Hartford, Ct., to Los Angeles, Ca., on April 5, 2007. He plans to walk backward across the U.S. to promote his "Youth Development Foundation.” Kathan accepted pledges up to $1 per mile for the 3,000-mile journey.

"This is not for me. It’s to do with the children,” Kathan said. "I want to help kids learn to get along. I want to teach them to do things with their talents and to talk with a civil tongue.”

Kathan, 54, began promoting physical fitness in about 2000, and now holds world records for dozens of calisthenic exercises. According to his web site, Kathan set the first records for one-finger and two-finger pushups, and Guinness World Records recognized him for a record in backhand pushups. He trains to break those and other records when he is not walking.

"People call me the ‘World Exercise Champion,’ Kathan said.

➡️ WORLD RECORD! Guinness World Record Holder from 2006 — "Most two-fingered push ups in 60 Secs"

➡️ ABOUT WILLIAM "REAL BILL" KATHAN:

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